by
Jason Hickel
We are told that free trade would create an international division of labour, and thereby give to each country the production which is in harmony with its natural advantage. You believe, perhaps, gentlemen, that the production of coffee and sugar is the natural destiny of the West Indies. Two centuries ago, nature, which does not trouble herself about commerce, had planted neither sugar-cane nor coffee trees there.
predates the Heckscher–Ohlin model (which asserts that inequalities in wealth emerge from inequalities in factors of production, and thus implies that they are "natural") but offers a nice criticism of it anyway
Hickel goes on to say that the capital/labour inequalities between North and South are due to political reasons (differences in labour laws, unequal trade, colonialism, structural adjustment)